275 réponses à ce sujet

[rjshae]

More than that, I don't really get the abuse. NWN2 works fine for me as a game, and as a toolset for creating modules. If anything, the main problem seems to be a persistence of very outdated notions about NWN2.

[Loki_999]

Patches fixed a lot, but still plenty of issues remain.  Still, it is decently playable now.

 

One thing that i really like about NWN2 is the ability to modify the GUI and make lots of crazy stuff there. I have a really crazy idea im planning on implementing next year using the GUI that simply would not be possible in NWN1, well, my card game also falls into that category as well.

 

But ill play devil's advocate a little, and say what i preferred in NWN1, although I rarely think of these much these days.

 

1) Dance of death: The base game combat anims.  First time i played NWN2 i was like "Why am i not moving?". And then when i got more and more attacks/round i was like "Huh, why is not rendering every attack?".

 

2) Right click and radials: Why oh why the devs felt it necessary to include a delay on right click in NWN2 ill never know... it makes the UI feel sluggish.... or maybe its not an intentional delay, its just sluggish at bringing up the menu. Either way, the UI in NWN1 felt more responsive.  And of course, right click radials were much nicer than the drop down menu we get in NWN2.

 

3) Level 40.. ok, its possible to mod level 40 with NWN2, RoT did it.  Generally speaking, i think for PWs its better to have a low max level.  eg: 20.  But with level 40 you could make some really crazy builds... although max of three classes.  Not sure whether thats better or worse. Pluses and minuses on that i think.

 

4) PrCs that went beyond level 10.  Ah, my lovely Archer that had over 30 levels of AA.  Or the level 30 Pale Master with his demi-lich summon.

 

5) Shifter *sniff* They screwed up polymorph in NWN2 making it much harder to implement a viable Shifter class. It is possible, i could do it, but it wouldn't be the same.

 

Ill not include the speed of area building because frankly speaking, areas in NWN1 are quite limited in what you can achieve. I don't do much area work on our PW, i leave that to others, but given enough time and effort i can create something really beautiful if i want. I just could never do that in NWN1, so the quicker area building for me is not really a plus for NWN1.

 

Having said all that, there are many more advantages to the NWN2 engine, that i don't think i could ever go back to NWN1.

[Tchos]

Patches fixed a lot, but still plenty of issues remain.  Still, it is decently playable now.

 

Right click and radials: Why oh why the devs felt it necessary to include a delay on right click in NWN2 ill never know... it makes the UI feel sluggish.... or maybe its not an intentional delay, its just sluggish at bringing up the menu.

 

And of course, right click radials were much nicer than the drop down menu we get in NWN2.

 

More than decently playable for me.  I've never experienced 99% of the bugs I've heard people talk about.

 

I can tell you why they included a delay, and then you won't have to never know.  Right-clicking serves two purposes in NWN2 -- selecting something without taking action on it, or bringing up the context menu.  The delay is to allow you to select something without bringing up the context menu.  You can adjust the length of the delay in the options screens.  You can even set it to appear instantly.
 

As for radial menus, I absolutely despise them on systems where I'm playing with a mouse and keyboard, and not a game controller where directional input would make sense out of necessity.  And that goes for dialogue wheels, too, which are also directionally based UIs designed for game controllers.  They were even less functional and more cumbersome in Planescape: Torment and the Temple of Elemental Evil.  I think NWN2's quickcast spell menu is the best casting menu in any of the dozen or two computer D&D games I've played.  Press F, click spell.

[Arkalezth]

Great, turning into a typical NWN1 vs. NWN2 thread. Just a couple of things because those are annoying and pointless:
 

Patches fixed a lot, but still plenty of issues remain.  Still, it is decently playable now.

 

"Decently playable"? Seriously? The average player may never notice a bug. And what are most of those bugs anyway? Things like a certain feat giving +1 instead of +2? Maybe NWN1 is more polished in that regard (I'm not that knowledgeable about that kind of stuff in NWN1), but those are minor issues that don't affect a game's playability. Every game has bugs, and few are as complex as these.
 

2) Right click and radials: Why oh why the devs felt it necessary to include a delay on right click in NWN2 ill never know... it makes the UI feel sluggish....

I -think- that you can remove the delay in the options, or at least shorten it.

 

Regarding the level cap and all that, well, that's personal preference. I think a cap of level 12 or so would be best, but neither game has it.

 

Anyway, again, even if we all agreed that NWN1 kicks NWN2's ass in any way you can possibly look at it, NWN2 is still there. The toolset is there, hundreds of modules and PWs are there (some successfully migrated from NWN1, by the way). The RP capabilities are there. That's not up for debate, even if you choose to look at the other side. You don't like it or don't know how to use it properly? Well, fine, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

[Loki_999]

LOL.. guess i never thought about why right click is like that, or why the delay. However, from a UX design point of view, having right click select and right click for menu is a bad design decision.

 

But at least i know now, and i hadn't even noticed there was an option for the delay.  Oh boy, do i have egg on my face!

 

@Arkalezth - By decently playable i meant exactly that. In other words, its fine. Plenty of other games i happily pay with event bigger bugs that i never worry about either. And i was playing Devil's advocate.  I'm 100% a NWN2 fanboi.

[Lugaid of the Red Stripes]

With games, it's not really that x list of features is better than y list of features, but about hitting some happy balance that just makes the game fun to play.  So while NWN2 is (objectively) better than NWN in many ways, imho NWN was lucky enough to hit just the right spot to be really fun for a lot of people.  Part of the frustration we NWN2 modders feel, or at least I feel, is that NWN2 has a great deal of potential, just needs a few subtle nudges to push to that happy spot of balance and fun.

 

Hardware is big part of it.  I remember re-installing NWN on a new machine way back in 2006, and just being thrilled by the fast rendering and fluid gameplay.  The tilesets, interior and exterior, are a big part of that feeling, too.  Once you've played the game a bit, you come to instantly recognize every single tile, and so with one glance you can look at an area and know exactly what's going on, where you can walk and where you can't, even where the mob is going to spawn.  It makes exploring big areas one big happy lark, a great way to kill time.

 

NWN2 is heavier than that, and certainly too heavy for most pre-2010 computers, but the potential is still there for NWN2 to be just as much fun as NWN.

[Tchos]

LOL.. guess i never thought about why right click is like that, or why the delay. However, from a UX design point of view, having right click select and right click for menu is a bad design decision.

 

Agreed.  It would be better if they were done differently.  And I wish that the camera were controlled with the right button instead of the middle one, and that the selection/menu (if they needed to be together) were on the middle instead of the right, but at least I can change that with NWN2 Hotkeys.

 

By the way:

 

All this, I could probably somehow ignore, the NWN2 has some good features and ideas such as easier visual effect creating, GUI modifying and... hmm thats probably all.

Never mind the single most important thing that makes me prefer NWN2 over NWN1: Party-based gameplay, just like in Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Planescape: Torment, the SSI Gold Box games, and the Temple of Elemental Evil.  And Dragon Age: Origins, outside of D&D.

 

But you're right, Ark -- this is all beside the point.

[rjshae]

Any issues I might have with the camera in NWN2 pales in comparison with my intense dislike of the camera in the DA series--especially DA2. But even the camera controls in other games like Witcher or Oblivion/Skyrim can be annoying at times. Every game has its pluses and minuses; NWN2 just happens to be the best game (right now) for what I like to do: party-based D&D adventures with decent graphics and a module-building toolset.

[BartjeD]

I think when it comes down to it it doesn't matter whether NWN 2 is now a very fun game with lots of modding potential. The hardcode clique of NWN 1 developers is stuck on their platform and doesn't want to experiment with NWN2, even if some of their player base does move on.

 

It strikes me as sad because change and the shift to finding a new balance is part of the natural order. It's a bad reaction to close your eyes and pretend nothing is happening.

 

But that doesn't mean this topic was authored with the expectation that NWN 1 players and developers should stop playing that game and move on to NWN 2. The way it appears to be intended is simply to ask: Why don't they at least try it out? No one is asking or expecting people to stop playing and developing for a platform they enjoy, so long as it lasts. But in the end it pays to plan for the future, and until we see a NWN3 that future lies with NWN2.

[Naeryna]

I must agree that I love NWN2 just because of quickcast. I discovered it pretty late in the game, but it rocks!

[Luminus]

I made 50 reasons of what  NwN2 does better on another thread so I won't repost it here.

But Quickcast, party control and Subraces are some of the biggest draws to NwN2.
As well as the Autodownloader for PWs, the spellcasting PrCs and the Warlock.

[kamal_]

@ark: re your preference for max level 12, there was at least a server or two that implemented the E6 and E8 variant rulesets, which limit max level to 6 and 8 respectively. So limiting to 12 is doable.

Iirc in E6 and E8 you could continue to gain some feats, but you were level capped at those levels. I think the idea is to make sure enemies that are supposed to be powerful remain so.

[Arkalezth]

Oh, I know some PWs have stuff like that or just a lower cap. Just saying that the level cap being at 30 or 40 doesn't make any difference to me, because I like neither, and it's not an objective reason to put a game above of another.

 

Again, I wouldn't want to turn this into another "my game is better than yours, haha" thread. But I guess it already is.

[-Semper-]

No one is asking or expecting people to stop playing and developing for a platform they enjoy, so long as it lasts. But in the end it pays to plan for the future, and until we see a NWN3 that future lies with NWN2.

 

the future lies with neither game. by the sheer number of players both are basically dead, and only a few hundred remain on either side of the fence. those left enjoy what they do and will enjoy it for the time to come. there won't be any further migration and i strongly doubt that there ever will be another series like nwn, with the focus on mp, modding and dming.
 

[Tchos]

Again, I wouldn't want to turn this into another "my game is better than yours, haha" thread. But I guess it already is.

 

Reminds me of this universal argument-starter:

 

[BartjeD]

the future lies with neither game. by the sheer number of players both are basically dead, and only a few hundred remain on either side of the fence. those left enjoy what they do and will enjoy it for the time to come. there won't be any further migration and i strongly doubt that there ever will be another series like nwn, with the focus on mp, modding and dming.
 

Actually, the NWN2 server which I play on, BGTSCC, has enjoyed a large and continuing influx of new players. A number are from Neverwinter Nights 1. A number from the Neverwinter MMO, which they say they dislike because the roleplay is too shallow, and there are no dungeon masters there. And also PnP entheusiasts, Baldur's Gate entheusiasts. 

 

NWN2 still draws players. I don't imagine this is exclusive to the BGTSCC server. If I go in into the custom content and Persistent World sections of this NWN2 board I also find that new Persistent Worlds are being developed. So apparantly those people also feel there are still plenty of players.

 

I haven't heard of new NWN 1 worlds being made in a while. But I admit I am not familiar with that game's online scene, I switched to NWN2 when it came out.... I'm a deserter

[kamal_]

Reminds me of this universal argument-starter:
 

What if my favorite band is Primus?

[BartjeD]

Then someone will tell you its secundus

[Tchos]

the future lies with neither game. by the sheer number of players both are basically dead, and only a few hundred remain on either side of the fence.

 

Why do you say only a few hundred?  Looking at Xaltar's NWN2 Facelift pack, it has an average of 10,000 unique downloads for each file (unique meaning it's not counting the same user downloading it more than once) since it was uploaded 2 years ago.  845 of the downloaders endorsed the file.  There are at least 10,000 players of NWN2 who have been interested in mods within the past 2 years.

 

What if my favorite band is Primus?

 

Well, since they inoculated themselves against that kind of attack by adopting it as a slogan, I suppose it's not really universal.

[rjshae]

Best bet for the future might be an open source port of NWN/NWN2, to be built upon by a modding and enhancement community. Not sure that will ever happen though.

[kamal_]

Best bet for the future might be an open source port of NWN/NWN2, to be built upon by a modding and enhancement community. Not sure that will ever happen though.

Xoreos the open souce aurora clone already exists and runs nwn1 (albeit some thing are not working yet). I posted it a couple of years ago in the nwn1 forums and got very few related responses. http://forum.bioware...-aurora-engine/

The xoreos guy was interviewed by the nwn podcast people a while back.

Rolo_kipp of nwn1 and the new vault is working on a jme implemetation capable of using nwn stuff.

[Shallina]

Bioware announced a game where it will be possible to have a DM for MP session. I wounder if it will have a toolset and how powerfull it will be.

[Luminus]

Anyone that says that the NwN games are dead, hasn't been on the Persistent Worlds, lately.
Daily, there are hundreds of people online. I know, I am one of them.

Check this. http://www.nwnlist.com/

At the time of this writing, there are over 800 people playing online on both games.

[kamal_]

Bioware announced a game where it will be possible to have a DM for MP session. I wounder if it will have a toolset and how powerfull it will be.

What game is that?

[Shallina]

the new IP in a modern setting (today), they started teasing about it.

 

http://www.pcworld.c...dow-realms.html